It's Chetan Bhagat versus the rest on Twitter

Until Monday, Chetan Bhagat was one of the most followed Indians on Twitter. The bestselling author of Five Point Someone, One Night at the Call Center, Three Mistakes of My Life and more recently, Two States, had more than 27,000 followers and was possibly one of the most accessible Indian celebrities on the popular microblogging site.

All that changed around 5 pm Monday evening when he blocked Saad Akhtar, a Delhi-based writer and cartoonist who runs a web comic called FlyYouFools, who poked fun at Bhagat's apparent bad mood by saying, "In a bad mood today, aren't we? Let me guess: Royalty check came in?" Akhtar retweeted that message, which otherwise would have been regular reply on Bhagat's and Akhtar's Twitter timeline.

This act triggered an avalanche. In the next couple of hours, a large part of the Indian Twitterati seemed to rise against the "block". So much so that, the hashtag #Chetanblocks became a trending topic on Twitter's home page.

A flurry of messages, accusations, counter-accusations, one-liners and cartoon strips followed. Around 8 pm or so, a video spoof came up on YouTube showing German dictator Adolf Hitler getting upset that Chetan Bhagat has blocked him.

Akhtar, whose Twitter handle is also called "FlyyouFools", was responding to Bhagat agonising over the piracy of his books in three different tweets: 1) "Almost anyone who is reading my pirated books can afford the original. It hurts me a lot personally. Just sharing." 2) "Piracy kills publishers, esp domestic literature. Gives incentive writers to move westwards. Don't do it if you care for Indian creativity." And 3) At a broader level, a society that doesn't respect intellectual property never excels at innovation. See what kind of India u want."

Bhagat, whose latest book Two States retails at Rs 95 - around the same price as a pirated book - told Akhtar he would block him if he continued to be smart alecky in his messages, and when the latter did not stop, Bhagat blocked him.

Bhagat in Hong KongThe author is currently in Hong Kong helping a friend set up a new company, and did not respond to our phone calls or emails, but he did put out a clarification on his Twitter account saying he stands by his decision to block Akhtar.

"Today, someone who had done so many times, trivialised my commitment to India," he wrote. "Few things can hurt me more. I still didn't block him and told him to stop. He enjoyed the attention and ridiculed that as well. I took a call and blocked him... I stand by my decision to block him, and I think I have the right to. Am aware tweets can still be accessed. Just don't want him in my timeline."

Mail Today asked Akhtar if he and Bhagat followers on Twitter went too far. "The situation got out of hand," he said. "He was angry over his books being pirated and I kind of made fun of the fact that he's getting a little too righteous about it as he was bringing in Indian culture and intellectual property rights into it. So anyway I made a smartass comment on it, which is what I do - I run a web comic after all. He didn't like that, warned me that he'll block me if I didn't stop. So I retweeted that message and he blocked me. All well and good, except that fact that he blocked me (and a couple of others) got picked up by other Tweeple and started gaining momentum. Pretty soon #chetanblocks was trending on Twitter's home page and it quickly degenerated into an angry mob."

'Price of fame of celebrities'Delhi-based communications professional and active Twitterer Surekha Pillai said the entire exchange - which lasted around four hours - was "the price of fame of celebrities had to pay on a democratic medium like Twitter", but also felt it went too far. "I believe it went way too far," Pillai said. "While it was amusing to begin with, it was not when it spiralled out of control with a virtual mob ganging up against Chetan."